Traitement de choc

Watching movies from the 70s can be an anthropological exercise. For instance, in those faraway times, people did not wear safety belts in cars. In fact they even sat on the rear body of convertibles.

They also bathed naked and we were allowed to see both male and female naked bodies, even getting glimpses of Delon's jewels.

With all this in display the plot take back stage, also because by now we saw it many times already. Girardot is a rich businesswoman who wants to ty a rejuvenating, expensive and secret treatment in a creepy clinic by the sea (nice landscape, though).

Delon is the mysterious doctor who manages the clinic. Add the Portuguese young members of staff who disappear one by one, do the math and you'll probably guess what's going on long before Girardot.

Alain Jessua has made some of the most disturbing movies of a generally tame French cinema (mainly in the seventies and early eighties unless some "avant-garde" drivel like "themroc" counts). Barely ten movies in almost forty years.His best works are to be found between 1972 and 1982,his most fruitful decade which begins with "traitement de choc" and encompasses forgotten works such as "les chiens " "Armaguedon" and "paradis pour tous" . "Traitement de choc" is his towering achievement though:and not only because Delon and Girardot are completely naked for one sequence by the sea .There's much more substance to find here.The core of movie is the fear of dying ,and when you see so many people worship their body today,you cannot deny this flick was ahead of its time.

In a strange clinic , doctors Delon and Duchaussoy make people look younger ,thanks to animal cells.That's what they say.Their patients set up a small community of happy few .Girardot who has been ditched by her partner and who comes to think she begins to get old enters the place.Little by little,strange things happen:a lot of the staff (migrant workers) are sent back home because they've got the homesick blues.That's what they say.One of her friend commits suicide because he was broke and could not afford this luxury anymore.That's what they say.The tension increases and in the last fifteen minutes ,"traitement de choc" becomes a true horror film.(One should note it was made the same year as "Solyent Green").

"Traitement de choc" is the selfishness of the bourgeoisie ,the power of money,the eternal dream of perpetual youth which haunts all of us ,man's exploitation of his fellow man (in every sense of the term)."Shock therapy" indeed.

38-year-old businesswoman (Annie Girardot), healthy but exhausted from work, takes the advice of her gay friend and checks into a rehabilitation spa overlooking the ocean. The institute specializes in living cell therapy, the menu consists of seaweed dishes, and a notice on the wall claims "your physical posture reflects the state of your psyche". It all looks good from the outset, but the new arrival's first hint of trouble comes while observing the frightened staff, the other clients, and even some of the locals, all of whom behave strangely...and then her gay friend maybe/maybe not commits suicide after warning her about the clinic's "monstrous horrors". French-Italian co-production, an early precursor to the For God's Sake, Get Out! Thriller genre, has been expertly-crafted for the most part by director and co-writer Alain Jessua, though one does wish the heroine made more sense as a character (she's sleeping with power-mad head honcho Alain Delon one minute and spying on him the next). Still intriguing, with rueful finish. *** from ****

'Shock Treatment' is the quoted translation at the start of this Alain Delon flick, part of the Alain Delon 'Screen Icons' box-set. The title used by IMDb stinks of Carry On innuendo as it belittles a popular sort of subject when it was made in 1973.

Rejuvenation and cosmetic beautification and its perceived ramifications were subjects handled quite a bit by the likes of Michael Crichton and this rather strange brew of beauty and savagery quite neatly stitches these two aspects together.

Annie Girardot plays the retail executive out to get some posh spa treatment at the exclusive resort run by the sinister Dr Devilers (Delon). Amongst the carrot juice cocktails and seaweed scrubs are life- affirming injections, whilst the ever rotating staff of illegally working Portuguese young male staff are despondent for some reason. A fellow patient mysteriously commits suicide and so Girardot goes on the prowl and does some investigating.

The explicit nudity was indeed an eye opener as I was only aware beforehand that it was cert 15 but of course all that frivolity, naturalness and freedom comes at a price. It all becomes nicely sickening the more we know as to how the clinic works and how it gets its medical "powers".

All in all, it's quite fun, suspenseful and macabre but please don't think that it's a cheesy comedy that's only out for cheap laughs that its popular title conveys.

The biggest shock was watching the interview with the director, Jessua, on the special features disc. Anyone less like a movie personality would be hard to imagine. More like your friendly neighbourhood greengrocer. How did this guy ever stray into the cinematic world ? If this flick became a success it was because it presented two stars, in roles which did not type-cast them. There is also an extended, reasonably unshocking, nudist scene of numerous extras at the seaside. Including the stars, Delon and Girardot. Hilarious. Weird is not the word. Plot and direction are beyond eccentric. Positively peculiar. Sort of haphazard. Murder, immigrant exploitation, police and other corruption are the message. Same as what used to be that of the News of the World, of distant British memory. Shock enjoyed for phony moral reasons.